Finding My Community
As a kid I moved around a lot and that made it difficult for me to settle in and find my people. Coming to Washington I was able to find my community in Sammamish where I did my high school thus the people I met there have stuck with me since day one. Coming to UW, I knew I wanted to reflect my high school experience here too. Thus I decided to rush for Phi DE, a medical professional fraternity. Now I am part of lambda class and I found a group of likeminded wonderful mentors and people to share this difficult pre med journey with.
Proof Math
I have always been fond of math as I wanted to explore my interests in college. This led me to enrolling in the accelerated math series which became the a rather intellectually challenging experience for me. Despite the difficult class and content I am still working and not giving up as I am learning more than I am losing in this class. I hope to not eventually figure out my study plan in this class so I can excel in it as well as learn. I learned that I am not as good at math as I thought I was and simply doing the homework is not for me.
Psychology in My Everyday Life
I took Psych 101 to understand how my daily actions can be related to science. I learned that despite what people including myself might think, there is no one size fits all solution for studying habits. A variety of studying techniques is the best way to learn as it involves all parts of your brain. I implanted this learning to my math class in specific, (for example, visual learning, practice problems, etc.) each week I combine the different components of learnings and divide within the days of the week thus making it easier for me to retain and recall the information in th future.
Freshmen Year Reflection
I realized that college requires a lot of work, more smart work than hard work. I am beginning to realize that there is a lot of competition at UW especially due to the pre-med weed out classes. My expectations for myself have significantly dropped as I am still figuring out what works best for me studying wise. But regardless of everything and the difficulty of classes I have not given up on my goals that I had set at the beginning of the year. There are times where I feel overwhelmed, a feeling I have not felt at this magnitude ever in my life, nonetheless I keep my head up high and keep going because I know I have the potential that medical school needs and wants. I must prove this to myself through my classes and activities which is easier said than done. I am surprised at how bad at math I am. This is something completely new to me; I have always excelled in math and right now I am doing worse than my honors class which makes me feel small and incapable of even graduating college. But this feeling will go away once I practice and become more familiar with the material. I didn’t expect UW’s quarter system to be so face passed; there is a test/exam/quiz every week. I keep thinking “I just need to get by this week” but it is a never-ending cycle till the end of quarter which is very discouraging and makes me feel stuck almost. Honors 100 is such a relaxing class and honestly the reflection are like mini-therapy sessions for me. It helps me see why I am doing what I am doing and what I am working toward which I am very grateful for. I would like to explore the peer mentorship/educator program in which I could possibly gain leadership opportunities as well as provide new honors members with the same relaxation/realizations honors 100 has provided me with. This year I was introduced to Phi DE and now I am an active member of. This medical fraternity provides me with a community of likeminded pre-meds, mentors, and scholars as well resources to succeed in my classes. It also has leadership opportunities, pre-med learning experiences, community service opportunities, shadowing opportunities and research opportunities. I hope to have a decent GPA by the end of this year and have a solid idea what my plan is for the next years. I want to know whether I want to take a gap year and what medical schools to apply to. I also want to solidify if I want to do a double major and a double minor, what minor(s) to do and just in general my 4-year plan. I hope to become a part of the Honors peer educator if I can handle the workload without decreasing my mental and physical health. At the end of the day, I can proudly say that despite the difficulty of my classes I am learning new things content wise and new things about my global and personal community alongside finding myself and passions and I believe that I am slowly but surely going to increase my academic abilities and succeed at UW and my post-graduate plans if I keep moving and don’t give up.
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